


Slipping Away

by Kleptomite



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Ambiguous Exile, Canon Compliant, F/F, Infatuation, Minor Violence, One Shot, What if the Exile's bond forming was a little more sinister?, hints of romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28645269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kleptomite/pseuds/Kleptomite
Summary: Meetra Surik. A pretty name. A tentative ally. Handmaiden's interest began at their first confronation, and escalated with alarming speed. Then came the staring, the anxious affection, the secrets divulged. Nothing Atris said could have ever prepared her for this.
Relationships: Brianna/The Jedi Exile
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Slipping Away

Handmaiden’s enamorment began at their first confrontation. 

The Exile. Her mistress’ rival, former Jedi, former war hero. 

Or war criminal, butcher of thousands. Also, a deceptively small woman, with slender bones and dainty hands and thin hair chopped to her shoulders. Handmaiden’s breath hitched. The world tunneled like a fish eye lense. 

The Exile. Maybe she was beautiful, with inquisitive eyes and quirked lips and skin perfectly molded over her skull. Maybe she was drab, with muted irises, a crooked nose and thin, unsightly eyebrows. Or maybe she was average, with unexceptional features and the forgettable smile of a stranger meandered past on the street. She could have been any of those things, or none of them, but they would have all been of the Handmaiden’s imagination, like a story character drawn from her children’s books. 

Despite her best efforts, the Exile couldn’t be detailed or described. She was unreadable, reshifting and reforming, impossible to stare at directly but impossible to tear her eyes away from completely. A whirlpool, with a thunderstorm brewing just at its edge, sucking her in deeper and deeper until Handmaiden couldn’t breathe, couldn’t escape. Her eyes were pinpricks of light, flashes of lightning, illuminating the cobalt waters of her skin and the graphite clouds of her brow. 

Beautiful and destructive and entrancing. Wisps of herself tore off and lost themselves in the crests of the Exile’s lips and the rounds of her cheeks. Was this normal? Was this the Dark Side? Was it possible to feel attached to a hated enemy? 

“Who are you?” The Exile asked. 

I don’t know. But whoever you are, is who I want to be. 

000

Meetra Surik. A simple name. Handmaiden liked it, how it rolled off her tongue, how it tasted like sea water and the cold snap of the breeze on her teeth. Meetra. What a mischievous name. Pretty name. Handmaiden had to stop herself from blushing.

The Exile stood across the cargo bay, chest heaving. Her hair clung to her forehead. The compressed jumpsuit she wore for underwear was dark and wrinkled with sweat. Her face was a maelstrom of raging waters and scathing hail that could strip the skin from Handmaiden’s bones. At its center, her eyes crackled with energy like atoms fissuring into meltdown. 

Beauty. In that moment, the Exile was beautiful. 

They had fought, over and over again, each and every day the  _ Hawk  _ hurdled through hyperspace. Handmaiden won, she always won, and Meetra would rise again, skin battered, demanding fresh combat. 

Handmaiden granted her request, though she didn’t know why. Something about Meetra’s form, the savagery of it, the raw desperation, encaptured her interest. 

War. Battle. Death. Surik knew them well, even a decade removed from the Mandalorian Wars, and the shadows cast from them hounded her, pushed her past the point of exhaustion, of yielding, of giving up. She would never capitulate, maybe not until either Handmaiden or Surk were dead. 

Handmaiden didn’t know what to make of that revelation. She stared at Meetra and felt the familiar nausea rise from her stomach. Her eyes dropped and found the spot just over her shoulder, away from the tempest threatening to consume her whole. 

Handmaiden still couldn’t look at Meetra, not directly, like staring into a solar eclipse. 

A heart of darkness with fringes of light just escaping around its edges. Beautiful but blinding, painfully so, and all but commanding her attention. 

“Ready?” Meetra called. Her voice was ragged. 

Handmaiden set her stance. Her muscles glowed with warmth. The touch of frigid air on her skin grounded her mind. She nodded. 

“Ready.” 

The storm enveloped her anew, and Handmaiden continued to fight. 

000

Mira sat next to her in the main hold. Handmaiden paused and dragged her eyes away. She’d been staring. She was always staring, sometimes without meaning to, far too often because she couldn’t help herself. 

Meetra and Atton spoke with each other across the room, the Exile leaned up against a wall and Atton a scant few inches away, his stare just averted to the left. Nobody ever looked Meetra in the eyes. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Mira asked. 

“What is it?” 

The huntress’ green eyes glanced at the Exile, then at Atton, and back to Handmaiden. “Do you ever . . . look at her? Like, actually look at her?” 

Handmaiden considered. “I’ve tried.” 

“What do you see?” 

A question without a simple answer, even after adventuring at Meetra’s side for what felt like years and years. She looked at the Exile’s head in profile. The dread came, as it always did, and then the nausea that twisted her senses and stoked the bile in the back of her throat. 

Past the cover of the storm and its violent winds, was a heart of vulnerability. A woman who had seen too much, killed too many, lost too much and yet somehow still lived. A dark heart pulsed with an anger that consumed everything. Then sadness. Regret. Obligation. Handmaiden had seen it in their duels, when Meetra’s barriers slipped, when the seas split and clouds parted. 

She walked with an open wound so deep and ugly it could swallow the stars whole. A core devoid of life or color, surrounded by a graveyard of ships and illuminated by sickly, emerald lightning. 

The place where everything ended. 

Meetra shifted. Her head turned and the fury of the storm washed over Handmaiden. The warmth drained from her body. The echani looked away from the Exile. “I don’t see anything.” 

Handmaiden walked away. 

000

The blow came from nowhere and levelled Handmaiden’s spirit. 

The world tilted off its axis. Pain exploded through her temple. A sharp grunt slipped through her lips as she tumbled to the ground, hard metal on hard bone, and after it maybe a little blood too. She tasted steel on her tongue. 

She scrambled to recover but it was already too late. In less than a second, Meetra had pounced, pinning Handmaiden’s arm over her head and shoving her forearm under the echani’s throat. They both froze. Their gasping breaths mingled in the space between them as they stared at each other, Surik hard into Handmaiden’s face and Handmaiden just over Surik’s right shoulder. 

The pressure on her throat was just enough to make breathing uncomfortable. Handmaiden swallowed. “I yield.” 

Instantly, the arm withdrew. Handmaiden’s breath hitched. Meetra retreated, hunched like a wounded animal. The turbulence around her eyes intensified. Handmaiden could sense the bloodlust exuding off her skin. 

They stared at each other for a long time. Handmaiden’s hand reached for her throat. Meetra’s lips fluttered. 

“Handmaiden.” 

Her title didn’t sound authentic. She wanted Meetra to say her name, her true name. She wanted to surrender it into the Exile’s care, to give that power to her. 

And that might mean the end of her, the end of everything. Atris. Her sisters. They would fade into memory. But maybe that was a good thing. 

Handmaiden bit her lip. “Yes?” 

“Look at me.” 

She tried, she really did, but the pain was too much. It crippled her, nearly made her wretch. Under the storm, Handmaiden saw the outline of a woman steeped in pain. It made her blood go cold. The Exile’s eyes flared. 

“I can’t,” Handmaiden admitted. 

Meetra shifted. She was closer now, only a few feet away. “Are you afraid of me?” 

Yes. No? 

It was disturbing how easy it was to like Meetra Surik. Nothing Atris had said could have prepared her for this. The long, arduous conversations. The secrets willingly divulged. The anxious affection vibrating in her core.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. It shouldn’t have been possible.

The Ebon Hawk was a melting pot of personalities at best, a nuclear disaster in the making at its very worst. A ragtag band of misfits, traitors, killers and outcasts so volatile the combination could melt even the sturdiest of olive branches. 

They would have fallen apart months ago if not for her, the Exile’s, endless charisma. 

Handmaiden saw the changes when Meetra entered the room as opposed to without her. Suddenly, Atton’s icy remarks melted into warm, bearable jokes. Mira’s wallflower, loner tendencies gave way to sharing dinner and courting advice with the crew. Bao-Dur and Mandalore could stand to be around each other. Mical’s soft voice rang clear and true like an arrow piercing through the cacophony. 

Handmaiden even found herself tolerating the miraluka Sith because Meetra believed in her. And that was enough. 

She couldn’t explain the gravity of Meetra’s presence. She was a nucleus crushing them all together like puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit. 

But the Exile could not be denied. When Meetra smiled, Handmaiden smiled. When she moved, Handmaiden moved. When she killed, Handmaiden killed and did so without remorse. 

The magnitude of Meetra’s wound cast a shadow as long as it was dark, and they were all lingering inside of it, consumed in it, following her into the future with unhesitating eagerness. 

“I would follow you anywhere,” She said finally. 

“I know.” Meetra closed the distance and placed a hand firmly on her shoulder. Handmaiden’s stomach congealed into mush. She stared into the face of the Exile and for the briefest of moments saw an image staring back at her through the choppy waters. 

A face, nymph-like and mischievous, with dark eyes and a smile wide enough to hold the sun. Ethereal, but also oddly human. Scars lined her cheeks. A stray, reddening pimple protruded from her chin. 

Then it shattered. Handmaiden looked away, the space behind her eyes burning. Meetra’s breath lapped against her hammering temple like a warm bandage. The fingers on Handmaiden’s shoulder were coarse but impossibly soft. 

“You have so much potential,” Meetra breathed, “I can train you to be so much more than you know.” 

“And my oath?” 

The hurricane accelerated. “Atris doesn’t deserve your loyalty.” 

Handmaiden’s tongue pressed hard into the roof of her mouth. “And you do?” 

She was floating in the storm’s apex, water up to her shoulders, and felt herself sinking deeper. 

She wanted this, more than anything. Her oath felt flimsy in the face of the emotions charged between them. Handmaiden and Meetra. Her friend. Her companion. Her leader. 

And yet . . . 

Meetra Meetra Meetra. 

Their bodies were so close. Handmaiden shuddered. 

“Do you trust me?” Meetra whispered. 

The void was so enticing. 

“Yes.” 

Brianna turned her head, stared into the wound, and Handmaiden slipped away. 


End file.
